Monthly Archives: June 2012

Few things make us as self-conscious as a mirror. The sight of a mirror often makes us involuntarily check and adjust our hair, our dress [...]

Some people think of fasting as a means of achieving mastery over their body. They fast to increase their willpower by refusing to let bodily [...]

For us as aspiring devotees, worldly temptations pose formidable challenges to our spiritual integrity. The Bhagavad-gita (02.67) indicates that these temptations are like stormy winds [...]

We often dread communal violence. So, we frequently feartheocracies due to their likely intolerance towards people who don’t abide by their sectarian beliefs. Naturally then, [...]

Debris usually doesn’t need a recipe. It results from a violent enough force that reduces an attractive structure to an unattractive mess. A recipe, on [...]

Love is characterized by desire: strong, sustained, single-pointed desire. As spiritual seekers, we aspire to awaken our love for Krishna. In the ultimate sense, that [...]

The possibility of aliens coming to the earth fascinates the contemporary imagination: "Can we encounter life-forms from other parts of the cosmos?" Science fiction regularly [...]

All of us want to do something new. Andour craving for newness seems ready to be fulfilled byall the new gadgets, new dresses and other [...]

Most of our thoughts run along the default rails of eating, mating, sleeping and defending. These activities may be necessary bodily functions, but our thoughts [...]

As soon as people enter our familiarity perimeter, our mind starts comparing us with them. Comparison is its favorite pastime. However, unlike Krishna’s pastimes that [...]

We often think of those with developed intellect as wise. We may even see a developed intellect as an indicator, or at least a facilitator, [...]

One of our innermost drives is the drive to show the world that we are someone significant. This drive impels us to win medals, which [...]

When children are tickled, they start laughing. Does their laughter indicate that they are happy? Not really. If happiness could be had just by tickling, [...]

Life confronts us with challenges both externally and internally. External upheavals – financial and political, for example – are like tornadoes that twist and topple [...]

Ours is an age of rights; we recognize that every individual has certain inviolable rights.  As our rights consciousness expands, it is befitting that we [...]

Our mind gets excited by any chance for material enjoyment. We have repeatedly experienced for ourselves that material enjoyment is at best an exasperating anti-climax, [...]

Few things obsess the contemporary mind as much as the latest styles. Most people today are possessed by the craze to parade themselves with the [...]

Words are indispensable tools for communicating our ideas and feelings with others. These verbal tools have become increasingly critical in our hi-tech age of phones [...]

We like our job one day and detest it the next day; we feel excited about our devotional activities sometimes and bored at other times. [...]

Our time is among our most wanted resources. Our fast-paced culture places so many demands on us that fitting all the items on our to-do [...]

The notion that we are ourselves God is the false ego’s ultimate weapon. The false ego is the subtlest of all the subtle material elements. [...]